Available in Portuguese.

After the 2021 Capitol Hill riots, The American Conservative published an article entitled ‘Waiting for Salazar’. It claimed that in troubled times a good alternative to liberalism for the US might be a traditionalist leader like the former Portuguese dictator, fueling both public and academic debate. Why does the image of Salazar still intrude upon American political debate? The answer lies also in the effectiveness of the Estado Novo’s soft power in the US. ExPORT examines how the Estado Novo used cultural diplomacy and national re/branding strategies in the US between 1933 and 1974, understanding the first as the use of soft power to achieve international goals, and the second as a policy aimed at recasting the country’s image to generate national pride and contest negative perceptions abroad. It assesses how Estado Novo targeted the US to promote its national culture, landscape, food, cinema, and folklore, in order to enhance stable relations, boost economic interaction and maintain control of, and support from, the Luso-American community. The project’s main hypothesis is that the Estado Novo intensified cultural diplomacy in periods when relations with the US were jeopardized and political diplomatic channels seemed spoiled. Offsetting this fragility, these policies served as a tool to secure both the regime’s geopolitical interests and its stability at home. The hypothesis relies upon analysis of funds allocated to soft power in the Portuguese state budget that indicated increased spending correlated with four key points: 1939-43 (the detaching from fascist powers); 1953-56 (the peak of Portuguese migration to the US, the Indian crisis, admission to the UN amidst its hostility to colonialism); 1961-63 (tensions between Salazar and Kennedy and the start of the colonial wars); 1968-74 (the rise of Caetano, and the apex of national and US protests against the colonialism and the regime). Overall, the project will interpret the term ‘ExPORT’ not just as an econom...

The object of the project is to identify, analyze and discuss the photographic image printed as propaganda instruments by the Portuguese «New State» from 1934 to end of the regime in April 1974.The two first stages are:(a) survey if magazines and albums; (b) selection of images and their description in order to create an entirely new database. The third stage concerns the final analysis and interpretations of the material. We will therefore present an interdisciplinary approach printed photography which will take in account the concepts brought to the field by image semiotics, post-colonial studies, anthropology as well as cultural and media studies.